Interviews News - Page 11

Do you have a hot MMA story or news item that you have found and would like to share?
Then read our guidelines then post it to our MMA News Share Forum to have it display here for the community to read on this page.

Michael Bisping: "Mayhem Miller's Mouth Is Bigger Than His Brain"
Michael Bisping coached against Jason "Mayhem" Miller on the season of The Ultimate Fighter that was filmed this summer and will air on Spike TV this fall, and for fans of the show who enjoy seeing conflict between the coaches, Bisping has some good news: There was friction during filming between the two of them.
Bisping said on The MMA Hour that he and Miller had several encounters during the taping of the show, and he came away from them with less respect for Miller than he had before.
"Miller's mouth is bigger than his brain," Bisping said. "I definitely get the upper hand throughout the entire season. I'm not talking about the fights, I'm just talking about the one-on-one interaction with Miller."

“I called Cesar and said, ‘What would you think about Nick and BJ Penn?’” White said. “And Cesar said, ‘If you’re offering us that fight, we’ll take it.’”
White admitted that dealing with both camps was an arduous process that’s left him a bit worn down, but that, at the end of the day, Diaz is a fighter’s fighter and and a match-up between he and Penn is one that promises fireworks

At this past weekend's poorly attended Strikeforce event, Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal was one of the few to say it – even though most people were thinking it.
Strikeforce appears all but dead.
"I (had) thought Strikeforce was a cancer patient," he told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). "Man, it's a damn AIDS patient instead – with Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the background ready to pull the plug."
Lawal's criticism began even before the event, "Strikeforce Grand Prix: Barnett vs. Kharitonov," which took place Saturday at Cincinanti's U.S. Bank Arena. Lawal (8-1 MMA, 3-1 SF) defeated fellow light heavyweight Roger Gracie (4-1 MMA, 2-1 SF) via first-round knockout on the Showtime-televised main card.

Highly touted prospect Douglas Lima (19-4 MMA, 1-0 BFC) recently advanced to the semifinals of Bellator's season-five welterweight tournament, but the win was anything but easy.
In fact, "The Phenom" was nearly ousted from the bracket in the opening round of his Bellator 49 bout with Steve Carl when a right hand clipped him behind the ear.
It was a lesson for Lima, who admitted the early blow affected his performance throughout the fight. However, he said he also learned a few valuable lessons along the way, including his new favorite dance move: the stanky leg.

Despite his recent, well-publicized troubles, which have included being suspended for steriods and receiving a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to money laundering charges, ESPN have seen fit to place him alongside host Jon Anik for the past two weeks running.
Sonnen has seized the moment, almost entirely dispensing with his standard UFC persona in favor of something far more professional, sincere, and, dare we say, truthful?
“The bottom line – Anderson Silva did an awesome job,” Sonnen said in his assessment of ‘The Spider’s’ performance at UFC 134 in Rio last weekend. “He continues with his dominance. He’s such a good striker. And what he’s really good at is keeping guys at range and having guys fight his fight, and he showed it again.”
Jon Anik then tested just how much he could get Sonnen to admit on national TV by asking him if his rival was the best in the business.
“I’m not ready to say he’s the best ever,” Sonnen said before conceding, “but he’s certainly special.”
There were flashes of the “old” Chael though, such as when he was asked who Silva can beat.
“For me personally it comes down to this – if you want the job done right, apparently I’m going to have to go out and do it myself.”
i also enjoyed his analysis of Anderson mocking opponents....
“When he drops his hands and mocks you, that’s when he’s getting ready – that’s his set-up. So you gotta make him restart. Either take a couple steps backwards [and] make him come to you, or charge him, but you’ve gotta reset him. That’s when he’s starting to get his footwork down.”

Jens Pulver said he's found a winning recipe for success in MMA. Or more accurately, one for finding success again.
The former UFC champ got back on the winning track this past Saturday with a second-round KO victory over WEC vet Coty Wheeler (14-4), and today, he told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio) about the ingredients that have gone into his reinvention.
Mostly, it's about limiting his appetites between fights.
"People want to know the biggest thing that makes a difference? I'm not going to go out after this fight and get up to 195 pounds, 20 percent body fat, sit for three months, and then go, 'Oh, it's fight time again?' Then spend my entire camp trying to get in shape," Pulver (25-15-1) said of his pay-per-view win at "MMA Fight Pit: Genesis." "That's how I rolled for the last four years.
"Now, I'm 156 this morning with six percent body fat, and I'm training this afternoon."
There, he'll don a jiu-jitsu gi and work with trainer and fighter Jeff Curran, with whom he took residence with this past November. The gym boasts a stable of impressive newcomers and veterans alike, but Pulver gave special attention to Curran's cousin, Pat Curran, who is scheduled to meet Marlon Sandro in the finals of the Bellator "Summer Series" bantamweight tournament on Saturday.
"I think Pat Curran, he definitely leads the way," Pulver said. "That's a powerful kid. He's leading the charge, dominating people in Bellator. It's hard not to follow."
Pulver has struggled to overcome mental blocks in 12 years of competition, and in recent years, he has met a rising tide of critics who say he should hang up his four-ounce gloves. As for now, he's ignoring them. The only appetite he's looking to feed is new information gleaned from the gym...

As a former Strikeforce champion, Marloes Coenen is understandably upset at the promotion for cutting her following a title-bout loss to Miesha Tate at this past month's "Strikeforce and M-1 Global: Fedor vs. Henderson" event.
But as a Strikeforce executive, former WEC boss Reed Harris doesn't understand why she's not being exactly truthful about the circumstances surrounding her release.
"When I read [what Coenen told MMAjunkie.com], I thought, 'Wow, there's some motive behind this because to take that situation and turn it around is just not right,'" Harris told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio).
Earlier this week, Coenen told MMAjunkie.com that she sensed a brewing issue even before her fight. The Golden Glory product was conspicuously absent from the July 30 event's pre-fight press conference, and she seemed to suggest that was no accident.
"We wanted to go with somebody else, and they said, 'No, no, you don't have to come any more. It's already done and you can stay [at the hotel],'" Coenen said. "Really weird to me because you don't leave the champion out of the press conference. If you say you will leave at 10 o'clock, you won't leave at 9:55. That happened throughout the entire week, that kind of stuff."
Harris, who was actually driving the vehicle Coenen was expected to take from her Hoffman Estates hotel to the downtown Chicago press conference, said her recounting of the situation wasn't exactly accurate...

Houston Alexander interviewed on the Sweep The Leg podcast ahead of his upcoming fight against Razak Al-Hassan at MMA Fight Pit Genesis says that the UFC have been watching his progress and he could be back in the UFC soon if he wins this next fight.

Results of an MRI conducted today confirmed that Alessio Sakara (15-8 MMA, 6-5 UFC) has torn his ACL and will be out a minimum of six to eight months, a representative from American Top Team confirmed today with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).
*this fight will never happen in the UFC..the third time it got canceld..cursed!..lol

Zuffa Threatens To Pull Overeem Out of Strikeforce Grand Prix
Speaking to Ariel Helwani on Monday's edition of MMAFighting.com's "The MMA Hour", Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion Alistair "The Reem" Overeem (35-11-0-1) had some shocking news to share, as he confirmed that he has been "threatened" by Zuffa to be pulled from the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix if he does not comply with a scheduled September 10th date to compete in the semi-finals vs. Antonio Silva.
"Stikeforce has requested me to accept the fight for Sept. 10, to agree on that, but I have not agreed on it and I also had some emails, some questions asked, is the fight confirmed? No, the fight is not confirmed. I do not confirm it and I will not confirm it," said Overeem...

Dont call it a comeback !
"Big" Ben Rothwell (31-7), has not been seen in the UFC cage in over a year now. His last steps inside the Octagon saw him take a hard earned decision win over tough kickboxer Gilbert Yvel. Despite the win, Rothwell left the cage with a torn ACL and a deviated septum. After surgery and a hell of alot of work, Rothwell is set to step back into action, and will square off against big hitting Mark Hunt at UFC 135. Speaking to CageWriter.com, Rothwell stated:
"I've really worked hard on myself. It's not a comeback. It's an unveiling. I have been off for more than a year, and instead of using it as a layoff I've used it as a huge building block. I posted a few pictures, and people said, 'Whoa, this guy ain't the same.' When I came back to Duke, he said, 'People who are off because of an injury usually gain 20 lbs. You look like you've lost 20 lbs.' ... A lot of these guys, especially champions, I see how they act, and it enrages me.

Coming up on September 24th, the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship will be on the line as current champion Jon "Bones" Jones faces one of the nastiest punchers to ever compete in the sport, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson.
One fighter who undeniably has more history with both of these men than anyone else is top 205 pound contender "Suga" Rashad Evans.

It seems Ryan "Darth" Bader (12-2) is done with calling out fighters in the future. After being dominated at UFC 126 by current Light Heavyweight champion Jon Jones, Bader decided to call out MMA legend Tito Ortiz. Against all odds, "The Huntington Beach Badboy" produced a stunnung upset and choked out Bader in the first round. That was a wake up call for Bader, who told ESPN.com:
"I lose three in a row, that's tough man. You see guys get cut for that. So yeah, I do feel that pressure.

You can add Antonio Rogerio Nogueira to the Loooooong list of Brazilian fighters who are lining up for a shot at Middleweight motormouth Chael Sonnen. In the last couple of years, Sonnen has made a name for himself as a tormentor of Brazilian MMA, laying into the likes of Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida and even Nogueira's big brother.
Now, speaking to Sherdog.com, Lil Nogs had voiced his own opinion on the controversial Republican:
“It sure would be a great fight with Chael Sonnen. He’s a guy everybody wants to beat. He’s not a good example for the sport. He talks too much and says a lot of nonsense."

Amid the scramble to find a replacement for an injured Phil Davis at UFC 133, UFC turned to former champion Lyoto Machida. It seemed set at first, with Dana White confident that Machida was stepping up. But it turned out that the only way Machida was accepting the short notice bout with Rashad Evans was if UFC opened up their ever fattening wallet.
After eventually finding Tito Ortiz to fight Evans in UFC 133 main event, UFC president Dana White let it be known that Machida was asking for "Anderson Silva money." Now, speaking to TATAME.com, Machida reveals his take on the situation:
“UFC invited me for a bout with three weeks in advance and I said I wouldn’t take it since the beginning. I wasn’t prepared for it, it’d be against my own principles of professionalism, against what my family and team believe, and didn’t want me to fight." Said former Light Heavyweight champion Machida.

Pound for Pound (P4P)....The term splits fans down the middle, some love doing P4P lists, others see them as ridiculous nonsense.
Ask fans who love them and you will usually hear that UFC Champions Anderson Silva and Georges St Pierre are topping the ranks, but does MMA's newest golden boy Jon "Bones" Jones deserve to be listed among those elite legendary names. Here is what UFC President Dana White thinks:
"Many people think that Jon Jones should be considered one of the pound-for-pound best fighters in the world...........

Former Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle talks about his negotiations with UFC, and his intention to try out for the 2012 Olympic American wrestling team.
Do we care or is he just getting older and trying to remain relevent?

It's long been a cliche, a fighter saying he's willing to die in the cage. For Mark Miller, he never knew how close he could have been to making that literal.
At 39, Miller returns to the fight game on Saturday in Moscow in a kickboxing match at the Ultimate Glory World Series. But his comeback, fighting for the first time in more than five years, has little to do with his age. The nearly foot-long scar down the center of his chest tells the bigger story.
When Miller gets in the ring against Nikolaj Falin, he will become the first known professional fighter to return after open-heart surgery.
Crazy article/interview.

Marcelo Barone: How’s the situation with Dream? Did they give you any response to your complaints about not being paid?
JZ Cavalcante: Not so far. My manager called them, but nobody respond, nobody answers. It’s disrespectful, the guys disappeared. The situation in Japan’s not good, because of the tsunami, but it’s no excuse, because it’s been a year. They should, at least, answer me, because there’re people saying they plan to produce another event.
MB: Do you intend to start a lawsuit so you’ll get paid?
JZ: I’m considering, I’m looking for a lawyer, trying to find another agency in Japan, somebody from there, who’s closer to it, so that I can get this cleared up.
MB: What do you think about this MMA market crash in Japan? Does that surprise you?
JZ: Over the years, after 2007, I realized it’ll all the same thing. I guess Japan didn’t keep up with MMA’s boom, its professionalization. The guys from Ultimate are much different than the guys in Japan, that schedule you to fight at the last minute, with two or three weeks in advance. It’s hard to promote the event that way… I realized that, if they didn’t change its concept, and started to think world wildly, it’d happen, like it did.
MB: And how are things with Strikeforce now?
JZ: Not good at all. They’ve been promising me a fight since December and every month they say the same thing: that I’ll be on their next card, next month… Meanwhile they’ve offered me two bouts with five days in advance and I asked them sometime to think about it. They called me in the morning and I asked them to give an answer in the evening. Then, when I called them, they have found someone already, and they didn’t tell me anything, they didn’t call me… I hope that with Strikeforce’s purchase, its organization will improve, and also its structure.